Stay with Me (21 page)

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Authors: Paul Griffin

BOOK: Stay with Me
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We sat in the back of the bus and kissed so hard I got dizzy because I kept forgetting to breathe. I couldn’t stand it when his lips weren’t touching mine. All I could think was that someday one of us would die first, and I hoped it was me, because how do you keep going without a man like that in your life? Ma wants me to move on? To what?
I know he still loves me. I know he’s a good person.
I’m going there again. I’ll keep going until he comes down to see me. I’ll call him first. I’ll keep calling until he comes to the phone. I can wait for him. By the time I’m thirty, maybe he’ll be out. Or if it’s a twenty-five-year sentence, I’ll be Ma’s age. I’ll work hard and save money and buy us that nice little house he wanted. Everything will be ready for us by the time he gets out. Everybody tells me I can’t think this way. Marcy gives me another month before I’m with some other guy. She says once you have sex, you have to keep getting it. But I can’t imagine being with anybody else. Ever. I’m supposed to be with Mack. I
feel
it, and I have ESP.
I count the words: 477. Nice. I rip the essay in half and toss it out the window into the hot wind with the rest of the test I spent the last year studying for, and I am so out of here.
 
Ma will be not at all surprised but extremely thrilled to hear Anthony is number one in his platoon. She will be very pissed that his special privileges limit him to twenty minutes of Skype time at 8:00 p.m., smack in the middle of Carmella Vaccuccia’s Wednesday night shift.
“You don’t need it anyway,”
Anthony says.
“You’re right, Ant. C-team status in Ultimate Frisbee Club and a year and a half of Brownies in a hand-me-down uniform—I’m sure to get into Princeton.”
“Two pieces of advice: Take it again in the fall. Don’t throw it out the window. Done. How’s Mack?”
I rehearsed the lie in the mirror until I actually believed it: He’s just
great,
I’m just
great,
everything is just
great
. “Well, Ant, Mack is just . . .”
“What happened? Cheech, we have seventeen minutes.”
I tell him.
He’s motionless, eyes downcast, stays like this for maybe a full minute. He clears his throat and nods.
“It’s gonna be okay.”
“It’s
not
.”
“First things first: He loves you.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“I’m a guy. He’s trying to make it easier for you.”
“And this is so easy.”
“All he wants is for you to be happy. If he sees you, it just prolongs the inevitable.”
“That we can’t be together.”
“Yes.”
“No. I reject that.”
“How do you think he feels, Cheech? He knows how long it takes you to get there, what you have to go through to get inside. To
be
inside, seeing him struggling. I wouldn’t want you or Ma to go through that for me.”
“But you would at least come down to tell us that.”
“I hope I would, but I’m not looking at being locked up for the next two decades.”
“Ma’s gonna flip when she finds out you’re taking his side.”
“No sides here. I’m dying for the both of you. Seriously, it sucks. Look, I’m not telling you to stop going. I don’t think he’ll sit with you, but you have to do what you’re doing until the sting fades, you know?”
“Ant, I know that down deep you’re probably furious at him—”
“In no way.”
“Well, I just want you to know he never hurt me.”
“Of course he didn’t.”
“I don’t want you to feel bad about setting us up.”
“I don’t.”
“You could feel a
little
bad, asshole!”
“I think this’ll be a defining moment for you. You just have to go through it, kid. When you’re ready to stop hurting, you’ll move on. But that won’t change the fact that you’ll always have a part of him with you. He made a terrible mistake, but he is an exceptional human being. He’s a good person. I know you know that. You were lucky to spend time with him. And he was lucky to know you. That doesn’t go away. It’s okay to keep loving him. Hey, Céce, it’s never easy, but it’s always great.”
“What is?”
I hear somebody on his end yell,
“Vaccuccia, twelve minutes.”
“Cheech, hang in, kid. And tell Ma I love her like a crazy person.”
“We still have twelve minutes.”
“I gotta call Mack.”
The Skype window
boinks,
and he’s gone.
THE FIFTY-SIXTH DAY . . .
 
(Thursday, August 6, morning)
 
MACK:
 
The test was yesterday. I know she crushed it. A month or so from now, she’ll be okay. She’ll be busy with a new school, new friends. A new man. Good.
They gave me a message paper, hand-scripted. Takes me a bit and some to make it out. Says Tony Vaccuccia will try to call Mack Morse next Sunday 8:00 p.m.
Takes me even longer to scratch out that I hope Tony’s doing good, that I’m sorry for everything, and he can’t call me anymore. I have no idea if I spelled one word right. I can’t send it, because I don’t have a stamp. Maybe they give you one. I don’t know. I never tried to send a letter from being locked up before. I don’t have Tony’s address either. How do I get it without asking Céce for it?
 
Wash has a pal in the K-9 training center. I pet the dogs and memorize their faces, close my eyes, let the being of each dog into me. The sun’s warm through their hair. We play chase while Wash and the trainer hash. Wash nods with his lips bunched. “Mack, come here a second.”
I jog over. “’Sup?”
Trainer says, “Can you write? I’m talking numbers, one to ten. That’s all you have to know.”
“Yeah, I can write one to ten. Can
you
?”
“I’m wondering if you would like to evaluate these dogs for me,” he says.
“Say again?”
“You take the dogs to that isolation cage over there, one at a time, okay? You say ‘sit,’ and then ‘up.’ If the dog don’t do it, I need you to note it.”
“I can train them to sit, if you want.”
The man gets an attitude with me. “No, no,
no
. They already been schooled. We just need to monitor them to see how much that learning is sticking. ‘Sit’ and ‘up’ them ten times in a row. Mark down how they do.”
“All right, then.”
“Good.” Dude hands me his clipboard and a pencil wrapped fat with orange glow tape. “Dogs’ names are on their collars. Thanks, little brother. You just made my lunch break an hour longer. They have that
Judge Judy
running back to back now most afternoons. I am addicted to it. You all excuse me, I’m gonna get back to the hutch before the next trial starts.”
“Wash?”
“Yup?”
“I remember what I wanted to say. That time by the bleachers there.”
“All right?”
“Thanks.”
Wash shrugs, looks away to the guard tower, spits through a V-gap in his teeth. He’s a real good spitter.
(The next morning, Friday, August 7, the fifty-seventh day . . .)
 
Twenty German shepherds. Yesterday, they averaged a little better than fifty percent retention on the obedience training. But today they’re worse. I chuck the clipboard and go to hands and knees. I show the dogs by example what
sit
and
up
mean.
Corner of my eye is Wash. He studies me acting like a dog. I teach them
sit
by lifting their chin and pressing down on their backside. I feed them snuck breakfast bread bits for rewards. End of the second session, the sheps are up to eighty percent.
“You German?” Wash says.
 
 
(The next morning, Saturday, August 8, the fifty-eighth day . . .)
 
End of the third session, every dog is a hundred percent solid on
sit
and
up
.
Guard comes over. “Morse, you got a phone call.”
I eye Wash. He’s squinting at me.
“Who is it?” I say.
“Didn’t say,” the other guard says.
“I know who it is anyhow,” I say.
“Then why’d you ask?” guard says.
Wash walks me to a phone bank. I have to make myself do this. “’Lo?”
“Mack?”
“Please, don’t call anymore, okay?”
“
Please
, baby, I just wanted to tell you—”
“Céce, I can’t do this, okay? You can’t come anymore either. I’m begging you. I gotta go.” I hang up.
Wash walks me back to my solitary hitch. He doesn’t ask me about my business. I want to tell him about her, but what’s the point of spreading the pain?
I almost asked how she did on the test. Almost told her I’ve been so worried about her, that I was sorry. I almost told her a lot of things.
“Wash, you mind I call somebody? The detective offered me three free calls after I got arrested.”
“And you didn’t use them?”
“Not a one.”
Wash frowns. “I would have to listen in on the call.”
“That’d be fine. Not planning any break. Just want to drop a quick hi on Boston is all.”
Wash nods. “You know how it is, though. Folks are different when they get out.”
“Not Boston.”
“Got to know him pretty good, did you? You only spent a few days with him, though, right?”
“Sometimes that’s all you need.” I hand him the paper scrap of Boston’s number from my pocket. I’d nearly sweated the numbers to a fadeout. Wash hands me the receiver and picks up another to listen in.
Lady picks up.
“Bueno?”
“Yes, ma’am, I’d like to speak with Boston?”
“Who?”
“Rafael, I mean. Sorry. Me and Bos, Rafael know each—”
She yells off, and the phone thunks like it got dropped, and then there’s,
“Yo?”
“Boston?”
“Yeah?”
“Mack.”
“What?”
“It’s Mack. Mack Morse?”
There’s a little quiet, and then,
“Oh, yeah. Hey.”
“Yo Boston, how you doing, brother?”
“Good.”
“Yeah, huh? I’m doing real good too. Yeah, man. You ain’t gonna believe this, but I got me a job training
dogs,
yo. Ain’t that crazy?”
“Cool-cool, listen, my moms don’t like me on the phone.”
“Sure-sure, I understand. I call you when she ain’t around then.”
“Mack? Like, good luck, you know?”
“Yeah. You too. Yo Boston, maybe I’ll—”
Click
.
I cradle the receiver. Wash cradles his.
“Moms don’t like him on the phone.”
“I heard.”
“I’ll try him another time, maybe.”
“I expect we could work that out,” Wash says.
“I’m real excited to see what your pal in K-9 thinks of the dogs now.”
 
The K-9 trainer dude studies my chart. “They came a long way, huh? Aw, now, wait. You didn’t train them did you?”
“Well.”
“Son, please, do
not
train these dogs. Serious. This is a very specific program. I told you not to do that.”
“Yeah, I know,” I say. “I’m real sorry. I am.”
Trainer flips through the evaluations. “Well, the paperwork don’t lie. If these dogs are at a hundred percent obedience, I have to promote them to bomb detection drills and get them one step closer to the street.” He leads the dogs away.
One dog turns back. She runs to me, rolls over at my feet, and whimpers for a belly scratch.
“Heya,
come
!” the trainer says.
“Wash,” I say, “you know these dogs are being trained for the bomb hop?”
“I was thinking narcotics seizure. That’s what they used to train them for. With the wars on, I suppose the bomb sniffing should have occurred to me.”
“I heard they have robots to bomb sniff now, and I heard they do it better,” I say.

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